Issue 20 - Apr. 12

Curriculum Connections...

Happy Friday! I hope everyone had a wonderful week. I want to begin by congratulating Daisy and Jackie again on their impending bundles of joy - we know you are both going to be great moms! Thank you to Sunshine for throwing such a great baby shower - the cake was delicious! Thank you to Joey, Joe and crew for getting everything set up and cleaned up afterwards. I also want to officially welcome Caitlyn, who is working in Jen and Joe's room - we are so happy to have you. Also, Ashley will be taking over for Jackie while she is out so please say hi when you see her in either Ginny's or Lesley's room next week! 

On another note, I also want to thank all of you for indulging me in allowing me to share my experiences from Tuesday - the share was extremely cathartic for me and I hope it was somewhat interesting to you. Tuesday was a reminder that no matter how stressful and crazy things get, staying calm and looking for the humor are great coping strategies for me. I am looking forward to our Faculty Meeting next week as we begin to unpack the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts (please remember that one person from every grade level should come to the meeting with their iPad to take notes - I recommend using Evernote).

Additionally, a special thank you to Mandy, Allison and Joan who helped me welcome our incoming Kindergarten parents at Orientation the other night. We officially have 52 munchkins registered for September, which means we are definitely going to have three classes next year. Also, a special thank you to Ally G. for putting together an amazing video, featuring our kids, that we shared with the parents at the Orientation experience. Check it out here...

KINDERGARTEN VIDEO

As we all know, state testing is coming up next week. It means that every free room in the building is being occupied and it is important that we try to keep the building as quiet and calm as possible to support our students being tested. Please review the email with all the scheduling changes and if you are proctoring the test, please read the directions in advance so you know what the children will be experiencing! I hope you will all join me in making next week a NO HW Week, at least in grades 3, 4 & 5 - they need a break! Just so you know, on the days of the state test, I will be in by 6:30am to package them so they are available for pick up by 7:30am. Remember, no one is allowed to score their own tests - just administer the test, collect them, put them in alphabetical order and submit them to me. An email will come out early next week for all the scheduling changes for the Math State Tests, so be on the lookout for that email.

Fortunately, it is not all about state testing in our building. There are so many amazing things happening in our building and I am lucky enough to see them during my many visits. This week I got to see...

• Kim use a "Verbal Exit Slip" at the end of her speech session with three students. The children were encouraged to reflect on what they practiced and reflect on what they did well. It was so awesome to hear them reflect on their learning. Check out this 10 second video clip of Alex sharing his learning...

• I also had a chance to visit with Christine, Donna and Melanie's classrooms as they were launching Shared Reading. The children were all provided an excerpt from a graphic novel that they are in the process of dissecting over the course of the week. It was such a powerful and appropriate way to expose the children to a different genre and then model how to navigate this very different type of text. This definitely speaks to the power of Shared Reading - thank you!

• I also had a chance to visit with Lesley's class while they were in the Computer Lab and they were working on their Planet PowerPoints. I was so impressed by how well they were navigating PowerPoint and how thoughtful they were about the information they included and the details they were attending to in order to enhance their presentations - great to watch!

• I also spent some time in Ginny's room and was so inspired by the stories the children were publishing as part of the Writing Workshop experience. The stories were well written, had a clear beginning, middle and end and also featured beautiful illustrations - we have some serious authors on our hands!

• Finally, I hung out in Risa's room where Risa, Jeanne and Terri were all working with different groups of children to help them generate science themed mathematics word problems. The children were so engaged and Jeanne found a way to seamlessly integrate the iPad into the experience - it was an awesome site!

I know I said it at the Faculty Meeting but it warrants being said again - the quality of instruction in our building far surpasses any amount or type of test prep - KUDOS TO YOU!

Tech Tip of the Week...

To continue building on our work with the iPads, one of the great things you can do is create videos of your students participating in various activities within the classroom. Once these videos are created, which can be student produced and directed (remember, kids collaborating and creating is a great way to use the iPads), you could upload them to a secure site where you can then easily share links to the videos with the parents. By doing this, you dont have to worry about trying to email the actual video, which may be too large! The two best options that I know about are...

YouTube - where you can create your own private account (links to a gmail account if you have one). You can then download the YouTube app to your iPad and once you shoot a video, you merely click on the arrow at the top of the video and one of the choices that will come up is YouTube (along with emailing or texting the video directly). You can then upload the video to YouTube and just click on the setting that says UNLISTED as the way to load the videos and then, only people who you share the link with can actually see the video. The other great feature about YouTube is that connects perfectly to Blogger if you use that for a class blog!

Vimeo - another web based video hosting site (that also has an app for the iPad) where you can upload videos and then email links to parents!

Schedule of the Week...

Monday, April 15

"A" Week
Tax Day!

Tuesday, April 16

ELA TESTING Gr. 3-5
Faculty Meeting at 3PM

Wednesday, April 17

CST at 1:20pm
ELA TESTING Gr. 3-5

Thursday, April 18

ELA TESTING Gr. 3-5
Board of Education Meeting at 7:30pm

Friday, April 19

Happy TGIF!

Kids' Korner

While playing handball at recess with some kids earlier in the week (and beating them all), one of them said, "Mr. Sinanis, if handball was an Olympic sport, you could win a gold medal!" LOL! I think this is seriously my only chance at Olympic glory - assuming my opponent is a 3rd Grader! LOL! 

Pics of the Week...

Check out Cantiague's Week in Tweets - click on the following link to see our Pics of the Week...

APRIL 15 WEEK IN TWEETS

Upcoming Board of Education Meetings...

• Thursday, Apr. 18th
• Thursday, May 23rd
• Thursday, June 13th